Maybe it’s cynical to note that the New York State Board of Regents chose the day after the California recall to vote to lower the score high school students will need on the Regents tests to graduate to 55 from 65. But they did seem awfully concerned as to how the press and the public would perceive the lowering of standards, which the body would like to spin as a simple delay of its long-standing plan to raise standards. It is, of course, a distinction without a difference.

Instead of students, starting in 2005, needing a 65 in each of the five Regents tests — English, world and American history, math, and science — they will continue to be able to slide by with 55. The decision is a setback for those who want to see higher standards applied across the board to students in the state, but it also throws into sharp relief the problem that no amount of standard-setting can make up for the underlying problems in our education system.

How much better is it to demand that our students attain merely a bad grade, 65, versus a terrible one, 55? This, especially, when it is projected that raising the bar will do little more than result in thousands more students not being able to get over it — and thus not graduating from high school. About 15% of students in New York City fall between the 55 and 65 point marks on a given Regents test. If the result simply were that schools would be forced to improve to bring students up to snuff, and they would succeed in doing so, high-stakes testing would be the cure to all of our ills.

In the real world, however, school districts will find ways around standards that wreak too much havoc. Many localities, faced with the prospect of tougher Regents standards, have brought up the idea of issuing their own diplomas, basically overriding the state and allowing their students to graduate despite failing the Regents. Last June, when students’ grades slipped on the Regents math test, parents and ed ucators protested that the test was flawed. They managed to get the scores invalidated for high school juniors and seniors.

The Regents tests are important, if for nothing else than to compare the performance of schools. But raising or lowering the bar ultimately is a zero-sum game. The Regents are scheduled to take up the matter of raising the passing score again in two years, but no one should hold his or her breath. Better than arguing over such matters, the Board of Regents has another tool at its disposal to improve education in the state: its power to approve charter schools. The New York Charter Schools Act of 1998 gave the state the authority to grant 100 charters to new charter schools — and authority to grant an unlimited number of charters to public schools where the parents want the schools to convert to charter status. The Board of Regents was given oversight of 50 of those new charters, the trustees of SUNY were given oversight of the other 50.

To date, the SUNY trustees have approved twice as many new charters as the lagging Regents — 34 versus 17 — according to the vice president of the New York Charter School Resource Center, Peter Murphy. It’s not hard to figure out why. The Regents are appointed to five-year terms by the Legislature — taken as a whole, meaning a simple majority of assembly members — making them functionally creatures of the speaker of the Democrat-dominated Assembly.

The Assembly is in turn dominated by teachers-union money. There are currently 11 charter school applications before the Regents, according to Mr. Murphy. Better than haggling over the difference between horrendous and unacceptable test scores, the Regents could be expediting these applications and even soliciting more. It would undoubtedly save more students from failure than would any fiddling with numbers. The worst strategy is to lower standards under the cover of election night.